Government cuts start to affect me

I've got to be honest, my politics are left of centre so it is easy to just knock the tories. However trying to be slightly more objective, their approach to education does worry me immensely.
The approach to schools just seems to be to beat them with sticks and give the better off plenty of avenues to prove that they can do better. Public schools have proved this. Money can buy a better education.
Any initiative that helps kids actually engage with these subjects is exactly what the school system lacks.
What about making schools somewhere where pupils of all abilities learn worthwhile skills. Labour failed here too but Gove just wants to blame teachers for parliaments inability to identify its education policies are failing the less able and less well off.

Successive governments have fannied about with education and obviously spent loads in the process, but it's questionable with how much success. I believe it's time primary education got back to basics with the neccessary divercification coming in later.

Yepp, totally agree, I think common sense and education management went for a burton a long time ago.

Also, whatever one thinks about Labour, the Tories were just lucky not to be in power when it all went pop!

The education system has not failed anybody, it is perfectly adequate for giving the nations youth the education they need.

It is the large minority of parents who don't teach their kids basic respect and discipline who make life impossible for both staff and other pupils in certain areas. The state can't be blamed for everything.

Smokin Joe wrote:

The education system has not failed anybody, it is perfectly adequate for giving the nations youth the education they need.

It is the large minority of parents who don't teach their kids basic respect and discipline who make life impossible for both staff and other pupils in certain areas. The state can't be blamed for everything.

With all due respect... Rubbish.

I strongly disagree. If you are academically able, you will have strengths and weaknesses but will generally thrive in a school environment. A large minority of children have very real potential that is left untapped by an education system that is geared solely towards the ideology that university is the only valid route to a successful adult life. It is not.
A large minority of kids are made to feel like failures by our education system. Where are the apprenticeships etc etc.
I love maths and spend all day long number crunching at work but I also understand peoples frustrations with the subject from when I have reached my own limits of ability.
Drumming subjects like maths into non-academic students in a classroom environment is route 1 to failure. Our education system and all the government rhetoric (both parties) has been around why the teachers can't make route 1 work in failing schools. It is flawed thinking.
I accept parenting is critical but it is not the only contributory factor.

morstar wrote:

Bobbinogs wrote:

"Education, Education, Education"

Pah! Yeah, all our current education woes are caused by the Tories and I worry about their approach to teaching, not.

Sorry to hear about your possible woes Northernneil. Country is blinking bankrupt and we are all having to pay for 12 years of spend now, worry about payment later (by the government, the bankers and the average consumer). Not a good time to be a teenager.

I'm not blaming the tories for the state of education. BOTH parties have failed in my opinion. What worries me is that Gove is just stepping up the pressure on schools even further when there is a fundamental flaw in the ideology. Some kids aren't going to be academic so let's give them an education they can engage with and teach them maths etc. in a practical environment.

As for the spending of labour. I don't think anyone can hide from
that truth. However, let me make a suggestion. Had the tories been in power, yes, less public money would have been spent and those savings would have been passed on as tax breaks to the better off. Nett position right now would be exactly the same. Nobody was prepared for the bubble to burst and anybody who had tried to legislate in the certainty that the bubble would burst would have not stayed in power. We were all on that treadmill trying desperately to keep up with the competition, be it globally or locally.

I dont think Labour failed in all respects towards education - there was a massive investment in school rebuilding and infrastructure (i dont however agree with how this was paid for through PFI) . There were years of neglect that needed big money to put right. From my own perspective I was at high school during the mid to late 90s and the change even in that time was noticeable - started off with crappy leaky building with plastic windows that didnt let the light in properly, some classes held in portacabins because the school roll was larger than the classroom accomodation allowed, an assembly hall that couldn't fit even half the kids in, sports equipment that was falling apart, sports fields that were once red ash/blaze but that had all weathered away to a rutted mess of stones, a single computer room which consisted of bbc micro computers from about 1982 (this was 1996!). By the time i left the improvements were starting but i went back a couple of years later to give a talk to school leavers wanting to go to university and it was like a completly different place. Good sports facilities with astropitches, proper kitted out gym that is open to the public outwith school hours, a large assembly hall that is fit for purpose, multiple computer rooms and laptops for use in other classes, refurbished technical and woodwork areas. And some proper interior decoration with some natural light and aireyness to the place rather than dank mess it was before. It really took me back how much had changed for the better...it isn't/wasn't an isolated case either as i went round about 10 different schools in the wider area and nearly all of them had been refurbished. It may have cost but it was not money wasted - it was money that needed to be spent - and should have been spent long before it was.

northernneil wrote:

ah, I see what you're getting at - guess you could see where I came from

apologies to rick if thats the case !

No probs - I get the wrong end of the stick too - regularly.

I meant - it's a massively sh!t situation.

eh wrote:

people have to stop expecting the state to do everything, you want clever kids then spend some time with them on something more useful than playing the wii.

I agree with you 50% here. Parents should be responsible for teaching the children to love learning, but the state has to be responsible for the content of their education.